Pricing within Cabnetware

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I posted this same message in the Business/ Management forum, but I wanted to see if I can get more input by putting it here as well.

Does anyone use the pricing option within CabnetWare? I think it is set up for linear foot pricing, but I am not sure because I can not figure out how to set it up.

LF pricing will not work for our shop because we have different prices for a 12" deep upper cabinet that is 36" long vs. a 24" deep cabinet that is 36" long. Add tall floor to ceiling cabinets, open vs with doors/drawers, # of drawers/doors, # of pulls and drawer slides, etc. this adds a lot of variables to the pricing.

Is there a way to make the in software pricing method work for our shop?

I am running solid vision which is planit software (cabinetware is also planit software)though different solid prices by the linear ft with options for pricing uppers separate than bases and tall cabinets.Cabinetware probably prices in a similiar fashion. Look into setup and you will see the options.It can also price by the sq ft .

Cabnetware will price it correctly whether you use square ft or linear ft. The way it works is it uses the actual material costs from the design and then adds the labor in sq.ft. or ln.ft. whatever you prefer. We use square ft for everything since it figures it out for us anyway.

It will also do a labor table pricing so that a given range of sizes would be the same labor cost.
There is plenty of help on the user forums if you need help setting it up.

Do you know if there are still any free CabnetWare user forums open? I know there used to be one that I read several years ago, but they started charging a yearly membership fee to access their page.

The owner of our shop does not subscribe to Planit's "e-support" anymore. For $1,500 a year, I too feel this is a not a very good deal. We already paid them quite a bit of money to use their software, but then they want to charge an additional annual amount to get support? I don't know if other companies charge double like that to use their software, but it doesn't seem like a very good way to keep customers to me.

If there is not a free forum somewhere, I will have to try to figure something else out because I can't figure out how to set up the price charts within CabnetWare. The included Help function is not very helpful with detailed explanations on how to do things either.

Jamie,
I don't know of any "free" forums for cabnetware. I have always supported them at the $1500.00 per year just to keep the latest and greatest software. The way I see it, I am keeping a great software alive for the future. Also, the last couple of updates have been really great and besides the bug fixes they added enough extra "features" to make it worth while. Even if I were a 2 man shop I would keep updating to the latest. If you do the math it is 72 cents per working hour for a typical work week and since we have 5 users here then its actually 14 cents per working hour to keep updated. It's one check I write with a smile.
Sorry if I sound like a cabnetware salesman but its just math.

Matt has a very good responce
I have had cabinetvision since 2002 and I am not in business per say now but still use it. Therefore I stopped paying for annual updates long ago. I now would have to pay back any years not paid to update again.
So I cannot get updated version that will run on new windows software. I,m stuck with windows XP on my computor.It is no longer worth my while to update due to all the years I have not paid. I,m still running version 4-1 .

You have 5 people using CabnetWare in your office? We have 2, myself and my brother in law. Sounds like you have a pretty decent sized operation going.

We have 3 full time employees in the office (myself, my dad, and my BIL) and a book keeper that comes in 1-2 times a week to run reports, pay bills, and payroll.

We have 9 other full time employees in our shop.

We did a big update on CabnetWare several years ago. We were using 4.0 and they were offering a special pricing to upgrade. We now have 9.0.1.5646

It was a big upgrade. We do not deal much with customers at all, so a lot of the new features were not very beneficial to us. We deal with General Contractors 95% of the time and they are the middle man between us and the customer for our commercial jobs.

I am starting to wonder if CabnetWare is the best software choice for our shop. I have heard a little about Cabinet Vision, but I am not sure what the differences are.

CabnetWare seems to be set up for more straight runs of cabinet boxes without much "custom" work. According to my dad, we are a custom commercial shop. We don't use standard box sizes and then use filler panels to make up the difference in length. We build cabinets to maximize the space available. Not sure if this is really a definition of custom work.

We do a lot of straight and radius reception counters/nurse stations for schools and hospitals too. CabnetWare seems to be a little limited when it comes to that type of specialty work. Maybe it has a lot of abilities that I am not aware of though. The only real professional training I have had is going to a training class about 8 or 9 years ago. It was a 3 day class, but I only got to go for 1 day. They covered the basics of how to use the program there and I already had a decent understanding of the program by that time, so I didn't really learn a lot.

The training classes may be a lot better now, but I would hate to go and my dad pay someone to teach me how to do something I already know how to do. Hard to know if it will be beneficial for us.

Kind of the same way he sees the update thing too I guess. Hard to justify the expense for updates that don't seem like they would benefit the way we use the program.? Not sure.

There are a lot of things within this business/office that I am unsure of. It is his business right now, so I am limited on what can be changed, but if it was mine right now, I think there are a lot of things I would be doing a lot differently and more efficiently. Lots of things I see that could use reworking and improvement.

Go to e-support and type in the subject, or question and I am certain there are many posts answering you questions.

We are a custom commercial shop also, and we pay the support fee. We have three keys and getting ready to buy the 4th. When I made the jump in machinery 10 years ago we bought a ptp to drill, light route, etc and it made a world of difference. It was explained to me then, that to get the full potential of the machine I would need the office to push it via software. No joke !

We run CV Ultimate with S2M, I can tell you right now I posted recievebles last quarter of the expense of the software, router, doweller and a bander. Sounds like a lot, but this is what good software can do. Yes, it was hard to set up, and I have a lot to learn, but it is nice to build a reception wall and cut all the wire chases in the studs on the router while it is on the table. I haven't even touched the pricing modules, yet, to be honest.

I know other shops running cabinetware and they doing very well. They use vectric and other third party software to help. I use just CV and Quickbooks. My office manager is full time and helps estimate, a lot of jobs.

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